Complete works of hall c.., p.458
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 458
By this time the fantasia was over, the fire had died down, the camels had been brought up, the flowery stranger had started afresh on his northward way, and the Sheikh and his people were standing ready to say farewell to the two travellers, who were facing south.
“God take you safely to your journey’s end, O brother!” said the Sheikh. Then with a grunt the camels knelt and rose, and at the next moment, amid a chorus of pious ejaculations, into the glistening moon track across the sand the Bedouin and his man disappeared.
The Bedouin was Gordon. He was thinner and more bronzed, yet not less well than when he left Cairo, for he had the strength of a soldier inured to hardship. But Osman, his servant and guide, having lived all his life in the schoolroom and the library, had dwindled away like their camels, which were utterly debilitated and had lost their humps.
Their journey had been long, for they had missed their way, being sometimes carried off by mirages and sometimes impeded by mountain ranges that rose sheer and sharp across their course. And often in the face of such obstacles, with his companion and his camels failing before his eyes, Gordon’s own spirit had also failed, and he had asked himself why, since he knew of no use that heaven could have for him there, he continued to trudge along through this bare and barren wilderness.
But doubt and uncertainty were now gone. He was in a fever of impatience to reach Khartoum that he might put an end to Ishmael’s scheme. That scheme was madness, and it could only end in disaster. Carried into execution it would be another Arab insurrection, and would lead to like failure and as much bloodshed.
The Englishman and the British soldier in Gordon, no less than the friend of the Egyptian people, rebelled against Ishmael’s plot. It was political mutiny against England, which Ishmael in Cairo had protested was no part of his spiritual plan. What influence had since played upon him to make him change the object of his mission? Who was this white woman, this Rani, this princess who had put an evil motive into his mind? Was she acting in the folly of good faith, or was she deceiving and betraying him? His wife, too! What could it mean?
In Gordon’s impatience only one thing was clear to him — that for England’s sake, and for Egypt’s also, he must reach Khartoum without delay. He must show Ishmael how impossible was his scheme, how dangerous, how deadly, how certain to lead to his own detection and perhaps death.
“We are thirty hours from Omdurman — can we do it in a day and a night, Osman?” he said, as soon as the camels swung away.
“God willing, we will,” said Osman, in a voice that betrayed at once his weakness and his devotion.
They rode all night, first in the breathless moonlight with its silvery shimmering haze, then in a strong wind that made the clouds sail before the stars and the camels beneath them feel like ships that were riding through a running sea, and last of all in the black hour before the dawn, when it was difficult to see the tracks and the beasts stumbled in the darkness.
The morning grew gray, and they were still riding. But Osman’s strength was failing rapidly, and when, half an hour afterward, the sun in its rising brightness began to flush with pink the stony heights of distant hills, they drew rein, made their camels kneel, and dismounted.
They were then near to a well, from which a group of laughing girls, with bare bronzed arms and shoulders, were drawing water in pitchers and carrying it away on their heads. While Osman loosened the saddles of the camels and fed the tired creatures with durah, Gordon asked one of the girls for a drink, and she held her pitcher to his lips, saying, with a smile, “May it give thee health and prosperity!”
After half an hour’s rest, having filled their water-skins and being refreshed with biscuits and dates, they readjusted the saddles of the camels, mounted and rose, and started again, making their salaams to the young daughters of the desert who stood grouped together in the morning sunshine and looked after them with laughing eyes.
The clear, vivifying, elastic desert air breathed upon their faces, and their camels, strengthened by rest and food, swung away with better speed. All day long they continued to ride without stopping. Gordon’s impatience increased every hour as he reflected upon the probable consequence of the scheme with which the unknown woman had inspired Ishmael, and Osman, being told of the danger, forgot his weakness in the fervour of his devotion.
The shadows lengthened along the sea-flat sand while they passed over wastes without a bush or a scrub or a sign of life, but just as the sun was setting they entered the crater-like valley of Kerreri, with its clumps of mimosa and its far view of the innumerable islands of the Nile.
This was the scene of Gordon’s first battle, the battle of Omdurman, and a score of tender and thrilling memories came crowding upon him from the past. Yonder was the thicket in which he had taken the Caliph’s flag, the spot where he had left Ali: “Show the bits of the bridle to my Colonel and tell him I died faithful. Say my salaams to him, Charlie. I knew Charlie Gordon Lord would stay with me to the end.”
How different the old battlefield was to-day! Instead of the deafening roar of cannon, the wail of shell, the frenzied shouts of the dervishes, and the swathes of sheeted dead, there was only the grim solitude of stony hills and yellow sand, with here and there some white and glistening bones over which the vultures circled in the silent air.
Night had fallen when they entered Omdurman, and the change in the town, too, struck a chill into Gordon’s heated spirit. No longer the dirty, disgusting Mahdist’s capital, it was deodorised, swept, and sweet. Could it be possible that he was opposing the forces which had brought this civilising change?
When the travellers reached the ferry the last boat for Khartoum had gone, and, the Nile being high, they had no choice but to remain in Omdurman until morning.
“Ma ‘aleysh! All happens as God ordains,” said Osman. But Gordon’s impatience could scarcely contain itself, so eager was he to undo the work of the woman who had done so much ill.
They lodged in a kahn of the old slave market, which was now full of peaceful people sitting about coffee-stalls lit by lanterns and candles, where formerly the air was tense with the frenzied gallopings of the wild Baggarah and the melancholy boom of the great ombeya, the fearful trumpet of death.
Before going to bed Gordon wrote another letter to Ishmael, saying he had got so far and expected to meet him in the morning. Then, being unable as yet to sleep under a roof, after sleeping so long on the desert, he dragged his angerib into the open and stretched himself under the stars.
There, gazing up into the great vault of heaven, a memory came back to him which had never once failed to come when he lay down to sleep — the memory of Helena. Every night on his long desert journey, whatever the discomfort of his bed, if it was only the hole between two stones which the Arab shepherds build to protect themselves from the wind, his last thought had been of her.
She was gone, she was lost to him, she would be in England by this time, and he was exiled from home for ever; but in the twilight moments of the heart and mind that go between the waking sense and sleep she was with him still.
And now, lying on his angerib in Omdurman, he could see her radiant eyes and hear her deep, melodious voice, and catch the note of the gay raillery that was perhaps her greatest charm. Though he had done this ever since he left Cairo, he felt to-night as if the sweet agony of it all would break his heart.
He looked up at the stars and found pleasure in thinking that the same sky was over Helena in England. Then he looked across at Khartoum and saw that all the windows of the Palace were lit up, as for a dance.
A mystic sense of some impending event came over him. What could it be? he wondered. Then he remembered the word of Osman, who was now breathing heavily at his side.
“Ma ‘aleysh! All happens as God ordains,” he thought. And then, sending a last greeting to Helena in England, he turned over and fell asleep.
IX
EARLY that morning Ahdullah had entered Ishmael’s room while the Master was still sleeping, for a messenger from Metimmeh, coming by train, had brought an urgent letter.
Ishmael read the letter and rose immediately, and when Helena met him in the guest-room half an hour afterward she saw that he was excited and disturbed.
“Rani,” he said, “I have been thinking about our plan, and have certain doubts about it. Better let it rest for a few days, at all events.”
Helena asked why, and she was told that a stranger was coming whose counsel might he wise, for he knew Cairo, the Government, and the Egyptian Army, and he had asked Ishmael to wait until he arrived before committing himself to any course.
“Who is he?” she asked. —
“One who loves the people and has suffered sorely for his love of them.”
“What is his name?”
“They call him Sheikh Omar Benani.”
At that moment she learned no more than that the stranger was a Bedouin chief of great fame and influence, that he had rested at Metimmeh the night before, but was now coming on to Khartoum as fast as a camel could carry him.
“He may he here to-night — to-morrow at latest,” said Ishmael; “so let us leave things where they are until our brother arrives.”
This news threw Helena into a fever of excitement. She saw the possibility of her scheme coming to naught. The Bedouin who was now on his way might destroy it.
She was afraid of this Bedouin. If he knew Cairo, the Government, and the Egyptian Army, he must also know that the plan which Ishmael had proposed to himself was impossible. That being so, he would advise Ishmael against it. His influence with Ishmael would be greater than her own, and as a consequence her plan would fail. Then all she had hoped for, all she had come for, all she had sacrificed so much for, would he lost and wasted.
What was she to do? There was only one thing possible — to cause Ishmael to commit himself to her plan before the Bedouin arrived in Khartoum.
Again fate assisted her. The same train that brought the Bedouin’s letter brought another messenger from Cairo. He was an immensely tall Dinka, who had been employed to avert suspicion. As soon as he was alone with Ishmael and his household he slipped off his sandal and, tearing open the undersole, produced a very small letter.
It was from the Ulema of El Azhar, and gave further particulars of the forthcoming festivities, with one hint of amazing advice that certainly could not have come from men of the world.
The Consul-General had decided to give his annual dinner in honour of the King’s birthday not as usual at the British Agency, but in the Pavilion of the Ghezirah Palace, on the island in front of the city. All the authorities would be there that night, housed under one roof. The British Army would still be in the provinces, and the Egyptian Army alone would be left in defence of the town. Therefore, to prevent the possibility of bloodshed, there was only one thing to do — turn the key on the Pavilion, in order to imprison the persons in command, and then open the bridge that crossed the Nile, that Ishmael’s following, with the consent of the native soldiers, might enter Cairo unopposed!
It was a plot whereof the counterpart could only have been found in the history of Abu Moslim and “Al Mansour,” and perhaps for that reason alone it took Ishmael’s heart by storm. But it required immediate confirmation, for if the secret scheme was to be carried out the arrangements were matters of urgency and the reply must be received at once.
There were some moments of tense silence after Ishmael had read the letter, for already he had begun to hesitate, to talk again of waiting for the Bedouin, who knew Egypt better than any one in the Soudan and was wise and brave and learned in war. But Helena, seeing her advantage, began to speak, with a flushed face and a trembling tongue, of the train that was to leave Khartoum for Cairo that morning and of the interval of four days before the departure of another one.
“There can be no time to lose,” she said, with a stifling sense of duplicity, “especially if the Ulema are to arrange for your own arrival as well.”
At length Ishmael, no longer the man he used to be, strong above all in common sense, but an enthusiast living in a world of dream, was swept away by the Ulema’s scheme. Seeing only one sure way to avoid bloodshed — that of shutting up the British ofiicials in the midst of their festivities, while the bridge that crossed the Nile was opened and his followers took peaceful possession of the city — he called on Helena to write his reply. It ran:
“To his Serenity the Chancellor of El Azhar from the slave of God, Ishmael Ameer: Good news! In the interests of peace I agree, though liking not for other reasons your plan of imprisoning Pharaoh and his people in their Pavilion, lest it should be said of us, ‘Behold the true believer resorts to the tricks of the infidels, who trust not in the good arm of God, praise be to Him, the Exalted One!”
“Nevertheless, I send you this word of greeting, giving my consent and saying, ‘Shortly I go down to Cairo myself to call upon our brothers under arms to our very great Lord, the Khedive, to refuse, when the day of our deliverance comes, to shed the blood of the children of the Most High.’” Having dictated this letter, and added the usual Arabic salutations, he signed it, and then, full of a fresh enthusiasm, he went off to midday prayers in the mosque, where with greater fervour than before he delivered his new message about the coming of the end.
Helena was now alone, for the Dinka had gone in with Abdullah to eat and to rest. The signed letter lay before her, and she knew that her time had come. In great haste she made a copy of the letter, and without waiting to think what she was doing she added Ishmael’s name to it. Then, hiding the original in her bosom, she called for the Dinka, gave him the copy, and hurried him off to the train, which was leaving immediately. After that, with a sense of mingled shame and triumph, she wrote to the Consul-General. Her excitement was so great that she could hardly hold the pen or frame coherent sentences. This was what she wrote:
“DEAR LORD NUNEHAM: You will remember that in the letter I wrote to you before I left Cairo I told you that I should write again, and that when I wrote, your enemy and mine and Gordon’s, as well as England’s and Egypt’s, would be in your hands.
“I am now fulfilling my promise, and you shall judge for yourself whether I am justifying my word. Ishmael Ameer, at the instigation of the Ulema, is about to return to Cairo. His object is to organise a meeting among the soldiers of the Egyptian Army, so that a vast multitude of his followers, coming behind him, may take possession of the city.
“This is to be done during the forthcoming festivities, and it is to reach its climax on the night of the King’s Birthday. Proof enclosed. It is the original of a letter to the Chancellor of El Azhar, a copy having been sent instead.
“Ishmael will travel by train — probably within a week — and he will wear the disguise of a Bedouin Sheikh. I leave you to wait and watch for him.
“Did I not say I was not idly boasting? In haste, “HELENA GRAVES.
“P.S. — I send this by my boy, Mosie. Please keep him in Cairo until you hear from me again.”
When she had finished her letter she paused for a moment and looked fixedly before her. Although she said nothing her lips moved as if she were interrogating the empty air. She was asking herself again, “Am I cruel and revengeful and vindictive?” And she was replying to herself as she had replied before: “If so, I cannot help it. I have lost my father and I have lost Gordon, and I am alone and my heart is torn.”
Strengthened by this thought she took Ishmael’s letter from her bosom and folded it inside her own. But while she was in the act of putting both into an envelope she paused again, for a new and more startling memory had flashed upon her. It was the memory of the marks upon her father’s throat and of the missing finger print which had somehow formed so fatal an evidence of Ishmael’s guilt.
How had it happened that she had forgotten this fact until now — that during all the time she had been in Khartoum she had never once remembered to verify it — that even at the moment she could not say whether the third finger of Ishmael’s left hand was intact or not?
But no matter! It was not a fact of the greatest consequence, and in any case she was too far gone to think of it now.
She sealed her envelope and addressed it and then called for Mosie. The black boy came running at the sound of her agitated voice.
“Mosie,” she said in a breathless whisper, “you have always said that you loved me so much that you would lay down your life for me.” The black boy showed his shining white teeth as if from ear to ear. “Do you think you could find your way back to Cairo alone and deliver a letter to the English lord?”
“Let lady try me,” said Mosie, who was ablaze with excitement in an instant.
Then she told him how he was to go — by train to Haifa, by Government boat to Shellal, by train again from Assouan to his journey’s end, travelling always in compartments occupied by natives. She also gave him strict injunctions against speaking to any one, either in Khartoum or on the way, or in Cairo until he came to the British Agency. There he was to ask for the Consul-General and give into his hands — his only — her private letter.
“The train leaves in half an hour, Mosie, so you’ll have to be quick,” she whispered.
“Yes, lady, yes, yes,” said Mosie at every word, and in his eagerness to be gone he almost snatched the letter out of her hand.
“No; give me one of your sandals,” she said; and when he had whipped it off, she took her scissors and lifting the inner sole she hid her letter underneath.
Then she hurried into her room, and returning with a small canvas bag, which contained nearly all the money she had left in the world, she gave it to the black boy and sent him off.
X
AFTER that she sat down, for her heart was heating violently and she could scarcely breathe. At the same moment she caught sight of her face in a hand glass that stood on the table at which she wrote, and the features looked so strange that they scarcely seemed to be her own.
If anybody with the eye of the spirit could have gazed at that moment into the deepest recesses of her soul — harder to look into than the obscurity of the sea — he would have seen a battlefield of contending passions. She was reflecting for the first time on the whole meaning of what she had done. She had condemned Ishmael Ameer to death! Or at least, at the very least, to lifelong imprisonment in Damietta or Torah!
